The FICO project initially aimed at integrating the country’s major agricultural region to its north-south railway network, allowing for grains and other crops to be directly transported to the bigger shipping hubs along the coast while decreasing emissions by taking trucks off the roads.

But since 2015 the project has developed a geopolitical aspect, after Brazil, China and Peru signed a treaty to start researching the possibility of connecting the nation’s agriculture- and mining-rich regions to Peruvian ports—and especially after Peru, in 2024, inaugurated a deep water port majority owned by the Chinese shipping giant Cosco.

FICO is a project of Infra S.A., a federal public company with closed capital, linked to Brazil’s Ministry of Transport. The Brazilian mining giant Vale allowed some funds from two of their railway renovation projects to be sent instead to the project (…)

With demarcated territory in the state of Pará, the Xikrin people suffer with the consequences brought by Vale’s operations, including one of the largest open-air iron mines in the world, formerly owned by U.S. Steel.